Passengers: London & North Western Railway
Goods: British Railways (London Midland Region)

Passenger station SD999057
Goods station SD998054

Notes: Saddleworth is an extensive parish within which are several large villages, many hamlets and numerous farmsteads. Uppermill is one of the largest of the settlements, formerly possessing several woollen mills and a cotton mill, and today attracting visitors who enjoy its numerous quaint stone cottages and attractive shops. In August 1849 Saddleworth station opened on the Huddersfield - Manchester railway, about ½-mile north of Uppermill village, but in 1886 the village was provided with a far more conveniently located station on the new Micklehurst Loop. The new line was built primarily for through traffic rather than with local interests in mind, so unfortunately Uppermill and the other three ‘Loop’ stations had only an infrequent service of five trains each way on weekdays and none on Sunday.  Below is the timetable for Uppermill just over a year after the station opened:

§ Timetable suggests that Micklehurst Loop train couples with train via Mossley at Stalybridge

In winter 1895-96 the frequency of trains had not been altered, but they were re-timed and destinations had changed:

Uppermill station (rendered as ‘Upper Mill’ on OS maps and in the Railway Clearing House Handbook) had two facing platforms on an embankment with the station house and office range at road level built as a mirror image of the arrangement at Micklehurst.  The station house was constructed of dark red brick with string courses of blue engineering brick and pale stone lintels. It was a dignified two-storey structure, almost square in plan. The house was flanked by single-storey wings. The station house roof was hipped and slated, with restrained cresting and finials, and a cornice was provided using a row of bricks set at 45⁰ as dentils. The tall chimneystacks were of blue brick. The entrance from the road to the house was centrally placed and sheltered by a small sloping canopy, with pairs of tall rectangular windows either side. Apart from the opening above the doorway, other windows were also in pairs. The northern single-storey wing containing the booking hall was distinguished by a double-hipped awning, complementing the building’s hipped roof. The rear of the house directly abutted the embankment.

The two elevated platforms were provided with timber waiting rooms, the longer one – which probably also contained a porters’ room – being on the down platform. Both buildings were fronted by verandahs of equal length, that on the up platform being considerably longer than the building. The platforms were most likely of timber construction as that material was used for the platforms at Micklehurst, where they were also on an embankment, and timber would be a much lighter load than masonry for an embankment to support. It is assumed that access to the platforms was by staircases, as seen on photographs of Micklehurst and Staley & Millbrook stations which also had a road-level main buildings and elevated platforms.

At all four stations on the Micklehurst Loop the passenger and goods facilities were some distance apart. The difficult topography explains this feature of the stations: wide areas of level land had to be available, or created, for the goods facilities, whilst the passenger stations could be accommodated on narrower sites, preferably close to the main centre of population. However there was probably no real benefit in combining the two functions on one site. At Uppermill the passenger station was north of Station Road bridge while the goods yard was about 250yd to the south, where a broad embankment had to be constructed to accommodate it on the down (west) side of the running lines. Uppermill’s goods facilities consisted of several sidings and a large, two-storey, two-road warehouse in blue engineering brick – as found at the other three stations - a 5-ton capacity crane and a weigh office. The signal cabin was on the up side of the running lines.

The local passenger train service remained infrequent in the early years of the twentieth century, and the stations were lightly used.  Micklehurst closed to passengers in 1907, followed by Staley & Millbrook in 1909, but Uppermill  and Friezland remained open for several  years more.

¶ Approximate time. Calls by request to take up for Leeds and beyond.        No Sunday trains

The April 1910 timetable, above, shows a reduced service in comparison to 1895, particularly in the down direction. On 1 January 1917 the two remaining stations – along with a number of Britain’s quieter stations – were closed to release staff for military service in the ‘Great War’. Some of these stations re-opened after the war was over, but Uppermill  and Friezland did not. Passenger trains continued to use the Micklehurst Loop, but no record has been seen of calls being made after 1917 at any of the intermediate stations, even for excursions.

Uppermill station was administered by the London, Midland & Scottish Railway from January 1923 and British Railways’ London Midland Region from January 1948. On 15 June 1964 the goods station closed, but the signal cabin was in use until 3 October 1966 when the line closed entirely between Diggle and Hartshead Power Station (Staley & Millbrook). Today nothing remains of the goods station; a football pitch occupies the site of the warehouse and the southern end of the goods sidings, just north of Rush Hill Road, is now used by Saddleworth Swimming Pool. The railway trackbed through the passenger station and across Station Road bridge is now a public footpath. Nothing remains of the platforms but the station house is in residential use. It has retained much of its original appearance but has lost the small canopy above the door and there is only one chimneystack remaining. The recessed single-story wing south of the station house is not original.

CLICK HERE FOR A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE HUDDERSFIELD & MANCHESTER RAILWAY AND THE MICKLEHURST LOOP

Bradshaw from Nick Catford. Route map drawn by Alan Young

Other web sites: The Micklehurst Loop - Numerous archive pictures along the loop.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

• Bairstow, Martin   The Leeds, Huddersfield & Manchester Railway: the Standedge Line (Author, 1990)
• Holt, Geoffrey O  A regional history of the railways of Great Britain: Vol 10 The North West  (2nd Edition, revised by Gordon Biddle) (David & Charles, 1986)
• Hurst, Geoffrey Register of closed railways 1948-91 (Milepost, 1992)
• Joy, David  A regional history of the railways of Great Britain: Vol 8 South and West Yorkshire (2nd Edition) (David & Charles 1984) 
• Quick, Michael   Railway passenger stations in Great Britain: a chronology (RCTS 2009)
• Clinker, C R   Clinker’s register of closed passenger stations and goods depots  (Avon Anglia 1978)
• Wells, Jeffrey  Miles Platting to Diggle (via Ashton)  (Challenger, 1996)
• Fox, Peter Old Saddleworth (Author, 1982)

To see stations on the Micklehurst Loop Line
click on the station name:
Friezland, Micklehurst & Staley & Millbrook
See also Diggle